Here’s an exercise for becoming fluent with arpeggios. Use Practice Page #1 which will give you a way to practise in all keys. Then choose an arpeggio…

Say no more.

Don’t practice what you already know. Do what you don’t know. What do you do when you first pick up the instrument? Play an E?…

Yesterday we resolved all the notes of the C major scale against a C major chord. You might, on a very rainy day, like to…

All notes in C are not created equal. Play them one by one against a simple C chord and resolve them. Here’s what you might…

One way of looking at the diminished scale is to see it as two diminished chords arranged in various ways. If you stack them one…

Nice chord I took from Tchaikovsky’s String Quintet. It’s a bit of a stretch, and you have to fret a couple of notes with the…

Here’s an exercise that will help you know the fretboard better. Unless you know what the notes are on the fretboard you cannot apply theoretical knowledge,…

I have a few things related to technique that I’ll be posting soon, but just for now, here’s something you might try practising that can…

I was at a party the other day and a chap told me a story about a friend of his. No idea if it was…

Here are a couple of my favourite harmonic sounds from the Harmonic Minor. Combine these structures to get the flavour of the whole scale. To…

Your Voice. The Voice. I imagine, for a singer, there are two aspects of voice: there’s ‘the voice’ – a study of what can be…

Improvise a solo, or a free improvisation, but don’t use any definite pitches. Maybe mute the strings so you’re just creating a muffled thud. Now…

There are many ways to play this on the guitar, at least 50, probably more. On the piano, there’s only one place where each of…

  How do you get a guitarist to play quieter? Send him to Holland. So, I’m torn between two things. On the one hand, I…

Here’s the playlist. Add the greatest groove/feel you ever heard on a record. One thing I noticed from doing the last four posts about moments,…

Share a beautiful melody. Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas is one of my favourite melodies.  Also, I love the main themes to…

Share a favourite harmonic moment. I guess this could either be a chord change, or a bunch of chords. Or the sound of a chord,…

The kind of thing I’m thinking about is where you’re blabbing on to someone, ‘you know, that BIT in xxx, where yyy does zzz, it’s…

No Repeat Voicings – Another Mike Walker thing that he used to force me to do. He was quite a strict teacher. He used to…

Take your favourite tune and learn everything you can about it. I’d say just do one tune. It’s enough. Some of these jazz purist types…

AABA ABA AB AABCDBECDBAADECB ETC Form creates meaning. It gives a framework to what you do. Form is a reflection of structure on a larger…

There are obvious things one needs to do in order to improve one’s sight-reading: learn the notes on the fretboard, have an understanding of keys,…

Here are two ideas to do with space The first comes from artist Betty Edwards. In her fantastic book, Drawing on the Right Side of the…

This is a sort of rhythmic transposition that uses the relational values between rhythmic events which are then shifted to another rhythmic framework. If you…

In this diagram from A to C is 4 bars long. B is bar 3 – the midpoint. I feel it as an arc because…

The idea is to solo over the chord progression above but you’re only allowed to use the root notes of each chord. Only play ‘A’…

1. Mess about with these cycles. 2. Find something you like. 3. Listen to it over and over and over. 4. Imagine a photograph to…

Harmonic Cycles in G major. Suggest some thing to do with this…

Harmonic Cycles using the D Harmonic Minor scale. Try voice-leading, but today, why don’t you try to arpeggiate all these chords somehow? Maybe sweep-pick them…

Here’s the harmonised A Melodic Minor scale arranged in various cycles. The last three are the reverse of the first three, but you knew that…

Here’s a list of blues tunes in every major and minor key, and a Spotify Playlist so you can hear them all. I blogged about…

There are three minor pentaonics in a major scale. In G they are: A- B- and E- pentatonic. Analyse the notes of each penatatonic in…

I love being in bands where all the members are involved with the direction, arrangement, playing, marketing, ideas and so on. The rehearsals, gigs and…

Oops… Forgot to post this one in the right place. It’s a follow on idea from the first Practice Page post. You can see that…

Do all the previous posts on Scales in Intervals in all these scales. It’s a mammoth amount of work. I’d say impossible and pointless to…

Similar idea to yesterday’s post of using a specific interval, but apply it to a chord progression. As you feel comfortable being able to move…

For example, improvise freely with fourths or fifths. Concentrate on hearing the pitches before you play them. Or another way to put it: work on…

Apply other intervals to the previous three posts.